I was one of those who charged after the Nintendo Classic Edition plug’n’play consoles that came out last year, but like most others I was also one the people who did not manage to get on before they were discontinued.

However I soon learned that building one yourself using a Raspberry Pi makes much more sense. Not only does is that cheaper, but it also gives you a device that can emulate many other low bit gaming consoles (C64, Atari, SNES, Game Boy etc.).

So I found this nifty guide from the How To Geek site and stocked up on the basic materials needed to get started:

The controllers are USB-based mockups of the classic NES-controllers. I prefer the ones from Retro-Link, which can be found on eBay. The Raspberry Pi microboard and all internals I bought from the excellent Danish vendor raspberrypi.dk (which is an Approved Reseller).

Putting the thing together is fairly quick; I spent roughly an hour on it using the above guide (flashing the software onto the Pi using the open source Etcher tool, which works well for OS X, finding the right roms, etc.).

In addition I spent some time learning to use the built-in file manager of Retropie, which is easy if you are used to using the linux shell (terminal), which I can but don’t do often. You mainly need to copy roms onto the board, and a good resource for such basic shell comments can be found here. I also used the Retropie documentation and this instructional video. Note: The Raspberry Pi defaults to US-keyboard (as opposed to my EU/Danish keyboard), so when using the shell it’s useful to have this image of the US-keyboard layout handy, so you’ll hit the right keys.

Lastly, I want to use my great new retrogaming kit on the go, so I searched around a bit for handy bag to carry it in. In the end I opted for one of the old Game Boy carry bags, which are easily found sold on used gear-sites, for instance this Danish one called RetroBros.dk. I also picked up a neat Raspberry Pi case off of Etsy vendor theC4Labs (although was very tempted to opt for this 3D-printed one, too).

Basically the Art Hack Day concept is simple: Invite a large group of artists and hackers and put them in a space for 48 hours to do whatever they want – but with the goal of collaborating to produce things that can be exhibited in the end. Tools, manufacturing equipment and basic materials are made available – a technology playground – so the main purpose is coming up with ideas.

Brainstorming ideas

We (Carl Emil Carlsen and Christian Villum, both from the Science Friction crew) teamed up to explore a handful of ideas; among other to look at old decrepit data. As brainstorming continued we ended up wanting to celebrate old computer desktop icons from the 1980s – including one of the most iconic of them all, the Trash Bin:

Basically we wanted to create an art installation based on augmented reality in which a tablet computer, when having it’s camera pointed towards a physical marker (a high-contrast icon), would activate – on the screen of the tablet – a waterfall of old decrepit desktop icons from the 1980s coming at the holder of the tablet. The idea was to make it look as if the icons would come pouring out (like emptying a trash bin) from a virtual black box above people’s heads in the fancy steel truss scaffolding system that the Art Hack Day room had been installed with for all of us to work in and exhibit from.

Getting started

First step was to dig out and clean up a lot of the desktop icons from back then. Far from their time of glory, they are now floating around online in nostalgic websites and forums. So we collected and cleaned them, pixel by pixel:

Next step was putting together the necessary software and code. We ended up using Unity and the free Vuforia app, compiled to an iPad Air. The icons was rendered using the build-in particles system. Only a few lines of code was written to handle the calibration, the rest was achieved using the Vuforia example scripts.

It was then time to produce the physical components consisting of two parts: A physical marker (which would serve to both activate the AR, but also to act as center piece of the installation), and a casing for the iPad.

Starting the process of producing the physical marker, with the kind help of the Art Hack Day staff, we cut out a white painted wooden plate and projected the Trash Bin icon onto it (using MadMapper for accuracy) in order to create a stencil template out of tape – which we could then spray paint on the white wood.

Making the installation

After drying over the night, this board was then mounted in the steel truss roughly 3 meter above the ground.

After which we could do the first testing – it worked and looked good:

Next it was time to build a casing for the tablet computer, so that it could be positioned in front of the wooden plate and thereby be available to the audience in an intuitive way. To buy materials we went to the absolutely magnificent Berlin design material institution, Modulor in Kreuzberg (right by Moritz Platz, highly recommended – when German say “Material total”, they mean it).

We ended up getting both wood casing and foam interior materials for maximum protection and nifty looks:

Casing finished – then adding wire to be able to hang it in front of the marker plate:

Testing and getting ready to exhibit

Lastly, a few hours before the opening of the exhibition, as more and more other art pieces around the room started coming together, it was time to test and prepare to the actual exhibit:

All done – ready for the crowd:

Exhibition time

After 48 hours of work (and some beers and a little sleep) it was finally time to present the final art piece to the public – as the exhibition opened and several hundred visitors started rolling in.

The reactions were really nice and people found different ways to interact with the Has-Been Trash Bin. Highlights included meta-videofilming the screen – and trying to replicate the marker as a tattoo (which, for the record, didn’t work – unfortunately).

Also virtually it was great to see how the installation was well received:

About

In a nutshell I'm a disruptive technology geek, project bootstrapper, open data/society activist & electronic music buff. I try to mess about with technology, fail and succeed, learn new stuff along the way and have fun at the same time - and present some musings from that process here.

If you want to get better acquainted, pop on over to my work related space at autofunk.dk